Why you need a second pair of eyes

Reader Aaron K. submitted an infographic advertising the upcoming New England Auto Show to be held in Boston (link).

As Aaron pointed out, there is plenty of elementary errors contained in one page. I don't think the designer did these things consciously. I believe in having someone else glance at your work before you publish it. Or take a walk around the house and look at your own work after flushing your head.

In the following diagram, the graphical elements (stick figures) are coding the data labels, rather than the data!

Helping readers figure out which one is male and which one is female seems, hmm, unnecessary.

Placing the above two charts side by side has the effect of suggesting that only male attendees were asked about their age.

Look again, is the proportion of attendees over 18 4%, 96% or 100%?

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This map irritates me.

Is it because they could have enlarged the frame just a little so as not to have to expel little Rhode Island from New England? Is it because not having the right frame size caused two numbers to sit outside New England when only one should? Is it because having two numbers outside the boundary tempted the designer to single out Rhode Island for the purpose of labeling? Is it because no other state is labeled besides Rhode Island?

Or is it because the land area is vastly disproportional to the data being displayed? Is it because the map construct is a geography lesson and nothing more (something I wrote about years ago)? Is it because the geography lesson is incomplete since only one state is labeled?

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According to the text at the bottom, this part of the country is proud of "it's (sic) academia" and has hundreds of thousands of college students, who somehow "contribute $4.8 billion+ to the city's economy," which tells me they are super-productive in the classrooms.

Comments

I'm assuming that there's a typo in the label for the leftmost 'bar' in the first chart. It should probably say "<18". Sure, that's obvious, but I can let it slide. To keep the labeling consistent, the last label should be ">=65" instead of "65+". Again, not a big deal. However, the height of the people doesn't represent the data at all--this bugs me the most.